


Jank

by BleedingTypewriter



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Bisexual Sakamoto Ryuji, Bottom Sakamoto Ryuji, Character Study, Friends to Lovers, Frottage, Good Boy Sakamoto Ryuji, Grinding, Happy Ending, Healing, Internalized Homophobia, Let Sakamoto Ryuji Say Fuck, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mentions of Homophobic Language, Mild descriptions of violence, Mildly Dubious Consent, Momentary Ryuji/18+ character, Momentary Ryuji/OC one night stand, One Shot, Past Abuse, Ryuji's half-brow origin story, Ryuji-centric, Sad Sakamoto Ryuji, Self-Discovery, Self-Esteem Issues, The first time Ryuji dyed his hair
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-19
Updated: 2020-06-19
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:22:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24813754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BleedingTypewriter/pseuds/BleedingTypewriter
Summary: Ryuji'sjanky. He knows this. He's known it ever since Kamoshida took a bat to his knee. But with Akira's help, he's pretty sure he can get it sorted out.------A series of vignettes exploring the background and growth of Ryuji Sakamoto.
Relationships: Kurusu Akira/Sakamoto Ryuji, Persona 5 Protagonist/Sakamoto Ryuji
Comments: 32
Kudos: 254





	Jank

When Kamoshida breaks his leg, it’s the sound that sticks with Ryuji the most: a dull cracking noise with a meaty thump underneath. It’s nothing like the sound effects in the movies; not a sharp, clear _snap_ , but a fleshy muffled _thump_ , mostly overshadowed by the squeak of his sneakers against the gym floor as he goes down.

It’s a _gross_ noise. It’s so much more _human_ than Ryuji would have expected. The break of the bone is buried under the sound of wood against skin, and it’s that nasty, heavy, meaty thud that stands out more than anything.

His screams don’t sound like the movies, either. They’re too hoarse and random. He tastes blood in them; chokes on them and garbles half of them into wet gasps or gags.

He’s almost thankful for how much it hurts. The pain is everything, everywhere, all over him, all over the _room_. The air is humid with his pain. It condenses on his skin like sweat and drips down into all the places he can’t reach. It hurts so much that it doesn’t fit—he can’t compare it to anything; can’t even call it _pain_ when it’s so much more than that. It’s like trying to understand the distance between here and the Sun, comparing kilometres to light years—how many paper cuts is this pain? How many bruises?

It’s so much pain that it’s _unfathomable_ , and that almost makes it better. It wraps around his memory but doesn’t sink in. It becomes the vague knowledge that _this is the worst thing he’s ever felt_ , but the sensation itself is lost to its own size.

The breaking sound, though...

The horrible, human sound of him breaking from the leg upward...

He dreams about it when they put him under; hears Kamoshida’s taunting, “With a useless work ethic like that you’re going to end up just like your drunk old man,” and then that awful _thump-crack-squeak_ on a loop, and realizes that _shit_ , the asshole had broken him _twice_ in ten seconds flat.

He breaks a third time, too, when he wakes up to his mother’s puffy eyes and watery, sad smile. And a fourth when he asks, “When can I run again?” and gets a tight, uncomfortable, “We’ll see, one day at a time...” in response.

Both those breaks sound damp and disgusting, too, and even though the pain makes him nauseous every second he’s awake, all the breaking sounds are so much worse.

Hospitals are already noisy with pain, but the breaking drowns out all the beeping and breathing and groaning and dying. It drowns out the doctors during their endless spiels (not that Ryuji’s interested anyway; running is kiboshed and he’s going to have lifelong stiffness with a gnarly scar, what else does he need to know?). It drowns out the crying Ryuji does. It drowns out the crying his mother does when she thinks Ryuji’s asleep and she’s decided it makes more sense to crash at the hospital than to run back home between shifts.

He wants to run it off, run it down, run himself in the opposite direction of it. All he knows how to do is run. But he _can’t._ He has to lie there and wallow, and he’s _terrible_ at wallowing. He’s used to _doing something_ with his feelings, and even though sometimes the _something_ he ends up doing is destructive (and other times it’s downright stupid) it’d still be better than lying prone in his own bullshit like this.

But his options are limited ( _singular_ , really), so Ryuji lies there and thinks about the nasty noise of his breaking bone (breaking future, breaking _life_ ) and eats all the shit it stirs up in him and by time he’s getting discharged from the hospital his leg has healed a little janky, and so has he.

He’s pretty sure his mom can tell. She cries on the ride home— _really_ cries, until Ryuji’s kind of worried about her crashing the car—and apologizes for all kinds of shit that isn’t her fault. She says she’s sorry for being a single mom (like leaving hadn’t been the strongest, most important thing she’d ever done for him), for not protecting him from his dad (like it shouldn’t have been the other way around— _him_ protecting _her_ ), for working so much (like she has a choice if they want to eat).

He tries to tell her that it’s okay, that she doesn’t need to be sorry, but she just keeps on crying. Doesn’t even look at him, like it’ll just make it worse for her if she does.

It’s maybe the worst sounding break so far.

His teachers give him leeway for the first few days, but it dries up pretty quick when they realize he hasn’t made the slightest effort to keep up with his studies in the hospital. It’s almost surprising how easy it is to take their snide comments that he’s _headed nowhere fast_ in stride. He kind of agrees—what’s a star runner with a busted leg if not going nowhere fast? ( _Limping_ nowhere fast? Ha.)

Besides, his old man had always called him dumb, and his grades had never been above average even when he was, for the sake of his chance at a running scholarship, really giving them the old college try. ( _Ha_.) So maybe his pops was right—maybe he really is just a few tools short of a shed and realizing it is a kind of silver lining in all this.

It’s kind of nice to not have to try so hard in class.

It’s kind of nice to not have to try so hard in _life_.

Rumours start up among staff and students alike that he’s one of _those_ kinds of kids—a _problem child_ with _issues_. And if his dad had been right, in the end, about his smarts (and probably a bunch of other stuff, too, considering how he’s messed literally _everything_ up for him and his poor mom), maybe everyone else is, too. The evidence certainly seems to suggest it.

Maybe he hadn’t healed janky at all. Maybe he’d always been janky and it’s just now getting through his thick skull.

Thing is, he’d thought _maybe_ the track team would…you know, not be _nice_ to him, or anything, but...

He means, they’d been a _team_. They’d faced Kamoshida’s bullshit together. Even if Ryuji’s standing up to the asshole had meant the end of their track days, hadn’t it also meant the end of the abuse?

He’d just thought they’d at least leave him alone. Ignore him—give him a little bit of a break, considering they’d be the only ones at Shujin who would understand what a shattered leg would do to someone in their position.

So when one of them—Yamagi, a stocky distance runner Ryuji’d gotten along pretty well with—outwardly sneers on his way out of school one day, some tiny little piece inside Ryuji up and disappears.

It’s not even a particularly difficult thing to deal with—just an expression, not even an insult or flung fist. But it’s the last little chink in a long series of them in Ryuji’s armour, and now some vital part of it has fallen away and shattered on the floor, and there’s a weak spot left behind that he’s not sure won’t be fatal.

He eyes the side doors that lead to his favourite training spot behind the school, but his leg is still too weak to run on. He’d eat shit and probably end up in the hospital again, and while he doesn’t really care for his own sake, he refuses to do that to his mom.

He gets on the subway in a daze; by-passes Shibuya; gets off in Shinjuku, though he’s not sure why. He’s still in his school uniform, so it’s not like he’s going to get into any bars.

Even if he could, he wouldn’t want to. He’s always thought bars would smell like booze and sweat—the smell his father had carried no matter how much he bathed. Besides, he doesn’t want to know what he might do if confronted with the same demons that had seduced his old man. He already feels too similar to him, sometimes; feels like a natural burden too dumb to know how to smarten up. He doesn’t want to know how deep the similarities might run.

So he kicks around Shinjuku for an hour or so, getting side-eyed for his uniform, and winds up at a vending machine trying to decide if caffeine will worsen his jittery nerves too much.

“The one up the street is better.”

Ryuji jumps. Most people have left it at glances, not wanting to be seen talking with someone so young. He hadn’t been expecting to be approached.

The man is older, maybe in his twenties, though it’s hard to tell. It’s not that he looks _young_ ; more _ageless_. The wrinkles around his eyes might be premature or earned, Ryuji can’t tell. He’s dressed well—like a standard mid-tier businessman, honestly, in his decently-fitting blue suit and scuffed dress shoes—but it disguises his body shape. That might be the beginnings of a dad-bod tummy, or it might be the cheap-ish fabric of his blazer. There’s a hint of grey peppered in the black of his hair, but it almost looks dyed that way, like he’s _trying_ to come off older than he is (or maybe he really is just a stressed out twenty-something professional).

“Sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

Ryuji blinks. “You, uh...you didn’t…!”

The man smiles like he knows it’s a lie, but like it’s okay that it is.

Ryuji doesn’t smile back, but he doesn’t feel quite so much like screaming anymore, either. He’s not sure why. He’s not sure he has the energy to think about it.

The guy is pleasant enough, if a little too reluctant to let Ryuji walk away. He walks alongside him as he seeks out another vending machine—he’d been right, the one up the street _does_ have better shit.

And Ryuji’s dumb—he knows that by now—but he’s not _that_ dumb. He knows what it means in Shinjuku when someone is _this_ nice to a kid in uniform.

He knows he should do something about it, too. He should tell the dude to piss off. He should make his way out to a more public street where someone would notice his predicament.

But he’s still wired, still off, still so fucking _janky_.

So janky he kind of likes the attention; kind of likes the way it feels to have someone older than him tell him a few nice things for the first time in forever.

It’s fucked. It’s _so_ fucked, and he _knows_ that, but…

Well, _Ryuji’s_ fucked, too, right? He’s fucked in so many janky ways.

So maybe it’s natural that he’s fucked in this way, too: that he’s the kind of guy who gets an excited little flutter in his stomach when strange men chat him up in alleyways. The kind of guy who only hesitates for a second before agreeing to go back to a stranger’s apartment (“for a glass and some ice for his drink”— _right_ ).

To his credit, the man— _Shouto_ , he says, though Ryuji doubts that’s his real name—really does get him the glass and ice he’d offered, and even keeps his distance while they talk over a drink.

Ryuji wonders the whole time what the fuck he’s doing there. He wonders when he’s going to snap out of it and run for it.

But then, he can’t run anymore. Isn’t that why he’s here in the first place?

(God. So fucking _janky_ , had any part of him ended up in the right place?)

“You’re really good-looking, you know that?”

There it is. Ryuji’s probably lucky. He wonders if this is Shouto’s first time trying this; if he’s gone with such a soft open because he’s nervous or because he’s genuinely trying to keep from making Ryuji uncomfortable.

“Thanks,” Ryuji says, instead of putting his glass down and turning tail like he should. “I’m not...I don’t swing, uh…”

Shouto shrugs with an easy smile. “I don’t either. Not _really_ , you know?” (No, Ryuji doesn’t know. Can things work like that?) “Just sometimes…” He shrugs again.

Half-memories stir in the back of Ryuji’s mind: dull flashes of the times he’d thought without meaning to about the cocks in the low-res porn he’d pirated, not the things they’d been plowing into; the times he’d finally given in and touched himself _there_ , sneaking his fingers down behind his balls and then even further, ghosting against the rim of a place he’d known he had no business touching, coming almost reflexively at the errant, unavoidable thought of blunt, _male_ fingers pushing _inside_...

And somehow all those memories sound like breaking, too—that awful fleshy human _thump_ that means a thing won’t ever heal quite right.

“Sometimes...things happen?” Ryuji asks.

Shouto smiles wider; steps around the kitchen island; drops a hand on Ryuji’s hip where there can be no mistaking his intent. “Yeah. Things happen.”

Ryuji swallows. The look Shouto is giving him...the way it goes right to his gut and makes him burn but not with shame or guilt or anger and _shit_ it’s been so long since _anything_ has done that…

“I’ve never...had _this_ happen before...I mean, I’m…”

Shouto senses his inexperience. Ryuji can’t tell if he’s excited by it or not. “That’s okay. I don’t mind. I’ll go slow…”

And he does.

He kisses Ryuji in the kitchen until he stops shaking so bad; until he kind of learns to lean into the rhythm and do something with his hands instead of letting them hang by his sides. He undresses him carefully and goes down on him before he even deals with his own clothes, enveloping Ryuji in a new kind of wet heat that has him spilling embarrassingly fast. Shouto’s maybe a little pushy when it comes to fingering him, hushing and quieting him with deep kisses when he fights against the initial intrusion, but he does a thorough job; makes sure Ryuji’s sloppy and open and ready.

Shouto fucks him from behind. It feels kind of detached, but Ryuji likes that about it. He gets half-hard again, but makes no move to get himself off for a second time; focuses instead on the grunts from behind him and the way he feels full, full, _full,_ so there’s no room for all the other shit that’s been filling him up. His knee aches and so does his ass, but it’s a _good_ ache. It feels _right_ , god he’s so fucked up but it feels goddamn _right_ to be something _good_ for someone.

Shouto tells him so when he comes; grunts, “God, fuck, you’re so tight, so _good_ , ah!”

Ryuji feels better—even kind of okay—for about nine hours.

And then he wakes up with an empty condom packet stuck to his leg and a burning ache in his ass and a man’s arm slung over his chest and it’s hands down the worst break so far.

He shifts, and Shouto’s arm goes tight across him (tight and strong and _male_ , what the fuck), and the ache in Ryuji’s ass spikes up into his hips (strong and unmistakable and _inside him_ , _what the fuck_ ), and he thinks for a second he might puke right there in that strange bed because he kind of fucking _likes_ the feeling.

He wonders if there’s nothing _not_ wrong with him.

He wonders if there’s anything his father had been wrong about; remembers words like _faggot_ and _queer_ spat alongside disdainful side-eyes and booze-soaked threats and wonders if he’d been able to see, somehow, even way back then, that his son would just _have_ to give them trouble in _that way_ , too.

(He’s done so well up until now, too, heaping enough attention onto women to be able to ignore the little pangs he’d felt for...not women— _tiny_ pangs, _nothing to worry about_.)

(But then he’d done so well _not_ taking a swing at Kamoshida for a while there, too, and he’d messed that all up pretty spectacularly in the end, so he shouldn’t be surprised.)

He wakes Shouto up when he gets out of bed and offers an apology that doesn’t sound anywhere near sincere. The older man offers a bright greeting and a cup of coffee and a kiss against Ryuji’s shoulder blade, but he shrugs all three away.

He feels like he shouldn’t be able to breathe, but he _can_ , and that might be worse.

His knee aches when he stands. He feels grimy—sticky with sweat that’s not strictly his. Shouto points him in the direction of the shower, but he’s already pulling his pants on.

His phone buzzes from the pocket of them. His voicemail is full. His notifications are crammed with missed calls and texts from his mom. He considers calling her back, but he doesn’t know what he’d say, so he doesn’t bother.

He tells Shouto he’s going to the bathroom, then sneaks out the front door.

He uses the last of his phone battery to double-check his location—he hadn’t been paying attention the night before. Shouto could have ended up being an axe murderer and Ryuji wouldn’t have had a clue which way to run and somehow that's still less scary than what had actually happened.

He expects his mom to be _furious_ when he gets home, but she just looks up at him from the couch when he lets himself in, quiet and exhausted.

“Where were you?”

“I met a friend after school. I lost track of time and missed the last train, so I just stayed over.” He waggles his black phone screen at her. “My phone died, so…”

It’s not convincing. He knows that. He’s always been a bad liar, especially where his mom is concerned.

She seems to know it’s a lie, too; looks at him for a long time without saying anything.

She’s in uniform, but it’s the one from her night job. She should be getting ready for her morning shift by now.

There are bags under her eyes.

She sighs, and her shoulders sag, and she shakes her head a little as she says, “Alright. Alright, Ryuji.”

To his credit, he makes it to the shower before it worms its way far enough in to make him cry.

There’d been less fear in it—more resignation than anything else—but it’s what she used to say when his dad used to come home spewing threats and accusations: “ _Alright! Alright, Kougen…!_ ”

He can’t figure out if it’s worse that he really is _just like_ the old fuck, or that Kamoshida’d had a point, so his decision to deck him had been _extra_ unnecessary.

That makes him laugh, sort of. It’s a wet stutter of an inhale and a shuddery little breath afterward, anyway, and he thinks the feeling in his stomach might be laughter (though it might be the urge to throw up, too). The gnarled, twisted scar tissue clinging to his thigh and everything it had cost him is _totally unnecessary_.

Ha ha fuckin’ ha.

He looks down; watches the way the water bounces oddly off the puckered skin; wonders what else it could possibly cost him. A girlfriend, probably; who’d want someone with _that_ clinging on to them?

What a dumb question. He knows the answer to that. Men like Shouto would want something like _that_. He hadn’t lost pace when he’d tugged Ryuji’s pants down enough to reveal the ugly thing; hadn’t blinked or flinched or anything. He’d just looked up and grinned and said, “ _Rugged little troublemaker, aren’t you_?” and…

God. _Fuck_. The water’s bouncing oddly off his dick, now, too, as it twitches upward toward his belly.

He still can’t tell if the feeling in his stomach is laughter or nausea.

He doesn’t even _like_ …

Things just _happen_ …

It can be a _one-time thing_ , he can do at least _that_ right…

It hurts, the way he grabs his dick, but that might just be the way he’s giving in. And he _tries_ — _really_ tries, no bullshit—but the thought of the grainy tits on his laptop just don’t want to stay centre stage. When he comes, it’s to the memory of a hot male mouth on him, sucking him off like he’d deserved to feel that good.

Afterward, he stands at the mirror and stares at his reflection and tries to figure out if it’s obvious or not, the way all his broken pieces have been put back together with such shoddy work. He wonders how Shouto had been able to spot it; how Kamoshida had; how his mom had. He wonders if he’d need to see his expressions in action to get it; if his face does a dumb little interlude, or something, that makes it obvious how _messy_ he is inside. Or maybe it’s just in the details he’s too stupid to spot. Maybe it’s written all over him and he just can’t see it.

He grabs for a razor, and thinks for a second that it’s a _little_ melodramatic—what’s he going to do, off himself with a Gillette?—but it’s half his left eyebrow that takes the hit. It itches something fierce; leaves behind a red patch with rapidly swelling bumps. But he does the same to the right brow, regardless, before he can really think about it. He nicks himself this time—he hadn’t even bothered to rinse the dry blades. Two bubbles of blood well up and break along the fine lines of his irritated skin.

There. Now he can kind of see it. He thinks? Maybe. He certainly looks less alright than before, which must be more genuine, but it still feels flimsy, like he still has to double-check to catch the magnitude of his _jank_.

He digs through the medicine cabinet for two half-remembered cheap box dyes he’d bought for an ill-fated Halloween costume. He’s not sure if they’re still good; they smell like chemicals and ass when he cracks them open, but they might supposed to. There are instructions, but he’s iffy with those at the best of times, so he gets about as far as _mix gunk tube A with slop pot B_ before he decides he can wing the rest.

It takes twenty minutes to start itching; thirty to start burning; forty to get so unbearable the he decides, alright, _fuck_ the bright orange disaster he can see through the cheap plastic cap, he can’t stand it anymore. The dye stings something fierce as it runs into the nick on his eyebrow, so by the time he’s getting out of the shower for the second time in as many hours there’s an angry, tender lump around the cut.

It’s nothing compared to the angry, tender mayhem on his head.

He’s missed random patches of his natural black; left the rest in a haphazard series of gradients running between putrid orange and piss yellow. Even wet, he can tell that he’s royally fucked the tips, sticky hair splitting off in his fingers like he’s pulling apart cotton wool.

He’s a mess.

He’s a _mess_.

He starts to laugh, and once he does he finds he can’t stop. He laughs until his sides hurt; until his stomach cramps and he coughs so hard he gags and his whole face scrunches up so tight the red lump on his brow goes white. “Alright,” he chuckles at the delinquent wannabe in the mirror (ha ha fuckin’ _ha_ , he can’t even do _being bad_ right), “Alright…”

It’s well past his mom’s usual shift start when Ryuji finally emerges from the bathroom. He’d thought he’d have a few hours to figure out how to break her heart this way, but she’s in the same spot he’d left her in, still in her night nurse uniform. The phone handset is blinking in the corner: new voicemail, and the only calls they ever get are from Shujin or his mother’s bosses. She hasn’t missed a day without calling in since Ryuji’s dad left.

“Mom…?” he ventures quietly, but when she looks his way he realizes he doesn’t know what to say.

Apparently she doesn’t, either. She stares at him; at the swollen remains of his eyebrows; at the elementary school finger painting of his hair. He wants to tell her not to cry (because her face looks like it’s going to crumple any second) but her eyes stay dry despite her expression.

“Alright,” she says softly. “Alright…”

After she goes to her room it’s quiet for a long time. Ryuji spends the rest of the day in bed trying to work out which sad, wet noises come from his side of the drywall and which ones come from his mother’s.

* * *

They don’t have the money for corrective hair treatments, so it takes a few weeks of pharmacy runs and YouTube tutorials and his mom’s silently clipping away the dead ends over an old towel in the kitchen before Ryuji’s hair is all one colour again.

It takes a few months more before he’s all one piece again.

(An oddly shaped piece, make no mistake; a _janky fucking piece_ , mostly held together with chewing gum and twine, but at least one that’s not in immediate danger of ripping its stitches and letting the mess inside spurt out.)

He ends up spiky-haired and blonde with one eyebrow divvied between two eyes and a limp that, no matter how hard he tries, never fully goes away. Healing happens, he’s pretty sure, somewhere in there. He doesn’t really feel better so much as he feels insulated; all wrinkled and furrowed like scar tissue. He feels desensitized and over-sensitized all at once, numb by necessity except when it starts to ache.

Things are alright.

They’re not, really, of course; they’re total shit, but they’re more alright than they were before.

He and his mom mostly communicate in texts and quick hugs in the doorway as she’s rushing out or he’s rushing in. He stays out of the house as much as he can; stays in his room when he can’t find a good enough excuse. He can’t place the strain between them, so he doesn’t like to be around it too long. In short bursts he can avoid the inevitable awkward pause: the running out of things to talk about that don’t hurt.

She can’t ask about his friends —he doesn’t have any, anymore.

She can’t ask about his running—the most exercise he gets these days are his near-daily sprints to the subway station.

She can’t ask about school—his report cards speak for themselves.

(That still might be the only upside in all this: it really is a sick sort of relief to _not give a shit_ when he stares at yet another test paper and draws yet another blank.)

She can’t ask about girls—as if he stands a chance _there._ Bad boys are only tempting when they’re worth a damn outside the aesthetic. Ryuji knows that now. He’s tried—god, has he _tried_. He’s humiliated himself beyond what he’d thought possible in his attempts, and even though it never works, picking up girls might be the only thing left he really does _try_ at these days, because…

Well, if he can just get it to work _once_ …

If he can just _even things out_ , you know…? Get a girl into bed and tie up the score; one all, anyone’s game, folks…

Sometimes _things_ _happen_ , and his _one thing_ had _happened_ , and he just figures it’ll be a lot easier to stop thinking about his _thing that happened_ when he has other, normal, regular, everyday, _not janky_ things to compare it to.

Hell, maybe everything will be easier to stop thinking about once he has enough normal, regular, everyday, _not janky_ things piled up.

It’s a nice thought while it lasts.

———

To be fair, while Akira Kurusu doesn’t add anything normal, regular, or everyday to Ryuji’s life, and he certainly doesn’t make anything easier to stop thinking about, he’s a _big thing_ that _fucking happens_ , and this time it’s terrifying, again, sure, but also _un-fucking-real_.

This time the _things_ that happen are full of explanations Ryuji barely understands but doesn’t need to. These _things_ are ridiculous: _metaverses_ and _palaces_ and _talking cats_ and _changing hearts_. They’re powerful and unbelievable and dangerous in a way that exhilarates him so much the post-adrenaline shakes don’t hit for days, sometimes.

Akira’s _things_ can be gentler than that, too; _things_ that are close to the chest; things that get him running again, and on speaking terms with the running team, and telling his mom the truth when he claims that he’s been feeling okay, lately. His _things_ give Ryuji a (best? Is that too much? First doesn’t mean best, he really shouldn’t assume his rank with Akira, but…) friend, and six more to boot, and somehow all of them look at the janky piece of whatever Ryuji is and decide they’ll take him, anyway.

 _Akira_ decides he’ll take him, anyway, and it’s…

It’s wild.

It’s not like Ryuji’s changed or anything; not like he’s smartened up and figured his shit out. He’s still made of whatever the fuck was left after Kamo-shart-a was done with him, but it’s like Akira clocks it—clocks _all_ of it with that sharp, grey, quiet stare of his—and takes Ryuji on, anyway, and it’s _fucking wild_.

Ryuji’s—he’s _a lot_. He knows that. He’s always been a lot, but nowadays he finds he’s even worse. It’s not just the jank, either; it’s the way his social muscles have atrophied and gone numb. He doesn’t know how to calm down; how to read the room; how to keep up with the conversation and censor himself at the same time. He’s loud and dumb and _too much, all the time_ , but Akira just laughs and smiles and pokes fun and treats him like he’s worth a damn.

Even when he whiffs yet another shot in Mementos and Morgana points out how pathetic he is; even when Futaba gleefully points out his undateability; even when Makoto rolls her eyes or Ann elbows him in the ribs or Yusuke gives him that haughty _look_ or Haru finds the kindest way to decline his input…Akira nods at him, and tells him it’s okay, and…

Sometimes he even reminds Ryuji that his place is at Akira's side; tells him like it’s no big deal that Ryuji— _Ryuji_ , with all his _jank_ —belongs _right there_ , beside the ace-in-the-hole that Akira is in every way. (And honestly, Ryuji had really, _really_ regretted spewing that corny shit until the moment Akira’d parroted it back at him like it was the most obvious thing in the world, and then _goddamn_ Ryuji’d never been so grateful for his own motormouth in his life.)

Even now, with Ryuji hunched over a textbook he’s given up on reading, tapping out a rhythm against the page with his pencil (that he knows must be annoying because Ann keeps shooting him these looks that tell him he’s on _thin ice_ if he doesn’t cut it out), Akira glances over at him and catches his eye and smiles likes it’s just _fine_ that Ryuji’s clearly going to bomb this (he has to force his eyes to focus on the page to make out what language it’s in) English exam.

To be fair, Makoto’s trying her best, here. “Ryuji, do you _have to_ –?” She catches herself; takes a breath; continues a little calmer: “...do you have any questions?”

Ryuji sighs. This is why he doesn’t get these _phantom thieves study group_ things; it doesn’t do anyone else any good if they’re all having to slow down for the lowest common denominator. It’s not fair to them. “No,” he groans. “Or...yes? I don’t know, I have no idea what I’m even supposed to be concentrating on right now.”

Or _why_ he should be concentrating on it. Sometimes he just wants to slam a copy of his transcript on the table and ask them what the point of having him there is when it’s obviously just like his dad used to say: _some kinds of dumbass you just can’t fix_.

“Can you at least pretend to care about midterms?” Morgana quips, and Ryuji scoffs (even though he knows, _he knows_ , he shouldn’t take the bait like this, _god_ –).

“Easy to say for a cat. You don’t have to worry about them.”

“I’m _not_ a cat!”

“ _Please_ ,” Ann interjects. “Please can you _not_ right now?”

It shuts Morgana up, which is good, because Ryuji’s pretty sure it wouldn’t be enough to keep _him_ quiet if the little shit disturber’d kept going.

Ryuji doesn’t luck out twice, though; Ann’s words aren’t enough to stop Makoto, too: “What chapter are you on? We can get you back on track.”

Ryuji shrugs again, a little out of sync this time, one shoulder and then the other in an uncomfortable wave. “I don’t know…?”

“Surely at least keeping track of the subject matter would be advantageous,” Yusuke says, and he might be joking, but Ryuji can never really tell with him.

“Hey, gimme a break, how long have we been at it? The dumb need time to rest!”

“Why do you always do that?”

Ryuji blinks at Akira. He’s pinning Ryuji with one of those _stares_ of his, so the blonde feels like a half-finished lockpick or something; like a _project_ his best friend is working on. It’s...he wants to say _unnerving_ , but honestly, it’s…

(No. A twenty-something stranger is enough of a _one time thing_ , he will _not_ consider Akira like... _that_.)

“Do what?”

“Call yourself dumb.”

Ryuji gives another little uncomfortably divided shrug. “I’m just joking around…”

“But it’s...it’s like all the time.” Akira pauses; wrinkles his nose like he’s never tasted the words coming out of his mouth before. “ _All_ the time. You _always_ say you’re…”

Ryuji clears his throat. He’s bouncing his bad leg, and even though it makes his knee hurt a little, he can’t stop. Usually he and Akira have that in common; his best friend is constantly spinning his phone on a fingertip or rolling a pen back and forth between his knuckles. Now he’s totally still, leaned over his open textbook with his chin in his hand but attention focused completely on Ryuji. There’s a streak of glare across his glasses, so only the grey of his left eye is visible. It’s... _unnerving_.

(Definitely unnerving. And _nothing else_.)

(...)

“I dunno, man...you know me, I kinda _am_ pretty dumb.” He laughs a little dry series of _heh-heh-heh_ s, but no one else joins in, so he lets it peter out.

“That’s not...I mean, we joke, but...you’re not _dumb_ , Ryuji. You know you’re not _really_ dumb...right?” Ann says, and it’s oddly tentative, especially for her.

What is he supposed to say to that? When did everything get so serious? Shit, shouldn’t the fact that he’s already falling behind here be proof enough for them of his (lack of) brains? “I’m…” Ryuji looks at the other thieves helplessly. “...no?”

“Come on, you can’t just say, ‘I’m dumb,’ and use it as an excuse to beg off studying,” Morgana says.

Ryuji bristles. “It’s not an excuse! I’m just not...I can’t... _eff_ , if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck…”

He’s not even making any sense. He doesn’t know what he’s trying to say. He’s never tried to explain his jank before; not aloud.

He finds he fucking hates it.

“You’re not a duck,” Haru says quietly. Ryuji tries a laugh again— _heh-heh-heh_ —and it falls flat for a second time.

“Who told you you were–?” Akira cuts himself off, and Ryuji’s glad. _Everyone’s_ told him, and it’s odd watching Akira realize that; watching the strange, sour twist to his mouth even as that curious grey _stare_ doesn’t move except to flicker here and there like there’s an answer hidden somewhere in Ryuji’s expression. Hell, maybe there is; knowing Akira, he’s probably onto something. (Ryuji’s not sure why that prospect makes him panic so much.) “You’re not stupid.”

“Dude…” Ryuji scratches at the back of his neck. There’s a weird, stuttery shuffle in the room; a heaviness that he can’t quite put his finger on. “It’s alright, you know? It doesn’t bother me, anymo–”

“You’re…”

Whatever Ryuji is, Akira seems to think better of sharing it. He shakes his head, brow furrowed, and it’s weird seeing him like this because he’s always just _gotten_ Ryuji. Even when the explanations hadn’t made sense, Akira’d understood them (or at least taken them at face value; appreciated their simplicity). It makes Ryuji nervous. He doesn’t know what Akira’s looking for, and even worse, he doesn’t know if he’s going to find it.

Should he want him to?

“...you’re the reason we can use guns in the Metaverse,” Akira finally settles on.

Ryuji stares. “Uh.”

“You’re the reason we can use guns in the Metaverse. You brought in the first fake.”

Ryuji doesn’t…

He’s not sure where Akira’s…

What?

“I didn’t know that would work. That was a total fluke. Anyway, Morgana was the one who thou–”

“And you named the Phantom Thieves. You made our first calling card, and it _worked_.”

“Yeah, but...I mean, that was–”

“You write all our calling cards, and they work.”

“I just have shit I want to say to those asshole adults, dude, it’s not like someone else couldn’t make ’em sound better if they wanted.”

Ryuji doesn’t understand what’s going on. Is this an argument? He and Akira don’t argue. And anyway, it’s not like he _disagrees_ , it's just that these are...they’re _sidebars_ ; just the little bits and pieces he _can_ offer, so he does. They’re nothing special. He doesn’t know why they’re even talking about them.

“They couldn’t, though. It wouldn’t sound like the Thieves. We wouldn’t even _exist_ without you, Ryuji. You were the one who convinced me to go back into Kamoshida’s palace, you were the one who wouldn’t give up on the volleyball team when we found them in there because you knew we had to help them, you were the one who–”

“Okay! Man, okay! Just…”

He needs Akira to stop. He can’t...he’s not _used_ to…he can’t even pick apart all the things Akira’s saying fast enough to figure out how somehow his jank was to blame for it (because his jank is to blame for _everything_ , he knows better than to doubt that by now) and...

It’s just a lot.

“You write yourself off before you even start when everything about what you’ve done proves that you’re exceptional.”

 _Jesus_.

...that’s going a little far.

Isn’t it?

Even Akira seems to think so; he looks away ( _finally_ ; Ryuji swears those eyes bear physical weight) and picks up his pencil and starts twirling it between his knuckles. He drops it on the first run through; it spins off his pinky so he has to catch it and reset it at his index finger. “Anyway,” he says, and blinks twice just a little too fast. “You’re not stupid. So there.”

So…

So there?

Ryuji laughs again, and at least this time the others join. It’s quiet; not totally comfortable, but better than the silence he hadn’t understood the tension in.

(...hadn’t _wanted_ to understand the tension in?)

(...had _written himself off_ before he could...is that what Akira had said?)

“There you have it,” Makoto says.There’s an encouraging sort of finality about it, even though she keeps exchanging these weird, side-eyed glances with Akira that Ryuji doesn’t understand. “‘So there’ and all. So can I help you get back on track?”

Ryuji’s ears feel strangely warm. He’s blushing, he thinks; hot and sudden, not across the cheeks but down the back of his neck and along his collarbones. His palms are tingling. He feels buzzy in a way he can’t quite grasp.

He’s not stupid, huh?

...

 _So there_ , huh?

…

 _Huh_.

There are _things happening_ , here, Ryuji is pretty sure. He doesn’t know what they are yet; doesn’t know how to go about picking apart how they make him feel.

But he thinks maybe this time he might be able to figure it out.

He can try, at least.

“Yeah,” he says. “Uh...chapter seven…”

* * *

Akira shoots a god in the head.

He _shoots a god in the head_ , and Ryuji thinks it says a hell of a lot about him that he hardly ever brings it up. Sometimes it makes his head spin, the fact that Akira had faked his own death and taken in stride that his whole life had been a petty chess game and _clipped a fucking god right in the face with a mega-persona_ and gone to jail and been released and…

And now Akira lounges beside him in the attic reading manga, or blasts through cheesy video game levels with only half-focus, or wanders aimlessly through Shibuya or Kichijoji talking about everything and nothing with teenaged aloof interest. Ryuji doesn’t know how he can stand it; how he doesn’t start and end every conversation with, ‘Well, I _did_ shoot a god, so…’

But then…

Well, Ryuji can hardly get over it himself. And even though he _does_ bring it up now and again, despite himself—intones _holy shit, we fucked god up_ in the middle of the night on the Leblanc attic couch when he and Akira have just settled down to sleep (and sometimes they laugh about it and sometimes they really, _really_ don’t)—he’s not sure it’s something it’s possible to really _talk about_. There’s no cap to put on this kind of situation. There’s just the hit of adrenaline and the shakes afterward and the...now. They’d been victorious, but it had been in saving the world from its own rotten self. It doesn’t feel celebratory, just _right_ ; just _necessary_ , and with the job done, well…

It’s just impressive how well Akira does it, is all: goes back to being a regular teen.

But then, maybe he pulls it off so well because he’s _not_ a regular teen.

Even now, without the metaverse, without the gun he’d used to shoot god, it’s obvious that Akira Kurusu isn’t regular.

There’s a certain curiosity about him; a confidence in his ability to work the world out. Ryuji can't remember if it had been there before, or if Akira’d picked it up along the way. Maybe when the metaverse had collapsed all the bits of Joker and Arsene had manifested inside Akira again; have taken root and become Akira’s bright, determined desire to know what makes everyone around him tick.

Ryuji doesn’t think about it too much. It leads to questions he’s not ready to ask; questions about which parts of Captain Kidd and Seiten Taisei and William had tucked themselves back into _him_.

Instead he takes it for what it is—takes Akira for who he is. If nothing else, it’s only fair. His best friend is the kind of guy who shows up like a typhoon and upends everything in his path and then carefully sets it all back again; who puts a bullet in a god’s brain and then stretches out beside Ryuji just a few weeks later with an easy smile and, “When’d you first dye your hair?” on his lips.

Ryuji doesn’t know how Akira can still care about silly little things like that, but he appreciates that he does. As much as he misses their Phantom Thieves work—and he _does_ , so much, sometimes, that it almost sounds like another kind of break—it’s nice to be a lazy teen on a lazy Sunday, again. “After first year,” he answers.

Akira makes a non-committal noise. The early March chill has them side by side on his bed, today, blanketless but hunkered down within inches of each other to catch any errant warmth. Ryuji’s rereading the week’s manga. Akira’s paying lax attention to his phone. “Why’d you do it?” he asks idly.

Ryuji flips a page. Something clenches in his stomach, but it’s something small. His jank, he’s learned, doesn’t usually phase Akira; doesn’t have to be censored. (Sometimes Akira reacts so little to it Ryuji wonders if it’s really there at all—a nice, if ridiculous, thought.) “It was right after Kamoshida got me. Guess I was lookin’ for a change or something.” Heh— _or something_ , alright. That’s the best Ryuji’s got and it sounds cheap even to him but fuck if he knows what he’d really been after. He hasn’t figured that much out yet. “Now it just feels...I dunno, right? It’s like my face is used to it. Even my mom kinda likes it, I think.”

 _Likes it_ might be a stretch, but she _does_ scrub her fingers through it now and again, keeping on him to touch up his roots.

So does Akira. He does it now: ruffles the cool, slender fingers of his left hand in Ryuji’s hair and smiles at him over the top of his phone. “I like it, too. It suits you. You wouldn’t be you without it.”

Ryuji likes the feeling of those fingers in his hair, so he nudges Akira with a shoulder to get him back in his own space. “You’ve never seen me without it, how would you know?”

Akira looks at him—really looks, in that way that Ryuji has to look away from (because it’s... _unnerving_...still). “I just know. So there.”

Ryuji chuckles. His palms tingle, and he ditches the manga in favour of his own phone. “ _So there_ ,” he mimics, and grins when Akira gets him back with his own shoulder nudge.

( _So there_.)

(Huh.)

They devolve into talk about nothing in particular, the kind of idle chatter meant to do little else other than keep them awake (because Morgana’s staying with Futaba tonight and it’s just good sleepover etiquette to stay up until it’s that side of too late). It’s so mindlessly relaxing that it slips into _that_ kind of teen boy talk almost like it’d be weirder not to.

“If you could bang any fictional character, who would you choose?”

Akira wrinkles his nose. “ _Bang_?”

“Would you prefer _plow_?”

“...I would _not_.” They both laugh, low and easy. “I don’t know. Scullsy?”

Ryuji’s laughter turns loud and sharp. The volume of it earns him an elbow to the ribs. “ _Scullsy_? You into milfs, dude?”

Akira waggles his eyebrows. “You’re not?”

This time both of them probably laugh too loud. Ryuji yawns as they settle down; tries to hold his jaw shut against it. He feels a little loopy with encroaching sleepiness.

“What’s the furthest you’ve ever gotten?” Akira asks.

Ryuji’s thumb lands on his phone screen with a heavy tick; stays pressed there so the tweet he’d been half reading selects itself and asks what he’d like to do with it. “Uh,” he says; then repeats, “ _Uh_ ,” because he’s no good at lying, so what’s he supposed to say?

Akira chuckles. “What, really? _That_ makes you shy?”

“’m not shy,” Ryuji protests. (He’s not; he’s _mortified_ , is what he is.) “I’m...I’ve just...man, I’ve never gotten anywhere with a girl, alright?”

Akira’s chuckles fade. Ryuji can see him looking over, but he doesn’t know what his face is doing. He manages to get his thumb to swipe at his phone screen again, but Twitter is still asking him whether he wants to unfollow, mute, block, or report. “It’s okay, being a virgin is nothing to be embarrassed about.”

“ _Uh_ ,” Ryuji says again—because holy shit, _what is he supposed to say_?

“Aw, come on, don’t be like–” Akira cuts himself off. His phone drops face down onto his chest. Ryuji still can’t bring himself to look over. “Ryuji?”

“Look, you’re right. I’m embarrassed. Never even kissed a girl, now can we drop it?”

His face is red. It’s _so red,_ Ryuji can _feel_ the way it burns from his chest all the way up, hot even across his scalp and behind his ears.

“Ryuji, have you…?” Akira pauses. He drums his fingers against the back of his phone case. “What about with a guy?”

Ryuji’s thumb stutters. He thinks he might have just muted Ann, but he’s not sure. “What _about_ with a guy?” he asks, “I mean, not that that’s...come on, Akira, what are you... _geez_ , what kind of…”

Akira reaches over, plucks Ryuji’s phone out of his hand, and drops it into his stomach. Ryuji huffs at the impact. “That’s an awful lot of words,” Akira says, “for a ‘no’.”

Doesn’t Ryuji know it.

And here’s the weird thing: it’s not even that Ryuji’s all that scared to tell Akira about what he’d done when his jank had been fresh and all piled up on itself. Akira’s understood—or at least accepted—worse things about his best friend. And after all this time with his jank (and all this time with Akira) Ryuji’s learned to pick out a little better the differences between his father’s leftover fuckery (the word _queer_ , stinking of booze) and his own (the word _desperate_ , stinking of come and sweat). Really, if anyone would be able to look at the _thing_ that had _happened_ and discard it as just another big weird whatever that Ryuji’d had to get out of his system, it’d be Akira (the man who shot humanity’s desires in the face).

It’s just that Ryuji’s a bad liar, so he doesn’t want to know what it’ll sound like trying to say _one time thing_.

He doesn’t want to know how much it’ll shake.God, Akira’s done so much to help all his jank settle down, he doesn’t want to jumble it all up again like this.

“Uh,” he says.

“I have, if that makes you feel better,” Akira offers, calm as you please. “Kissed a guy, I mean.”

…

“...uh?”

That does _not_ make Ryuji feel any better.

…

Only, it does. It really does, in ways Ryuji’s not sure he’s ready to think about, because he’s got a nasty habit of getting ahead of himself and this opens up _dangerous_ possibilities in that regard.

Akira shrugs. “Is it that big of a deal?”

No.

 _Yes_.

“Nuh.”

“Ryuji, hey, come on, talk to me, I’m starting to feel like I really messed things up, here.” There’s laughter in it, but it’s tense, and its tension makes Ryuji tense, because Akira can be so many things so easily—curious and calm and teasing and determined—but _uncertain_ is a rare, foreign look on him.

Ryuji looks at him, now. His face is red, too, but in a markedly prettier way. He blushes _cute_ : across the bridge of his nose and over his cheekbones and around the shells of his ears instead of the all-over flush that’s making Ryuji’s t-shirt feel like it’s made of cheap terrycloth. He wants to say something like, ‘I don’t know if I discriminate or not,’ or ‘That’s fine, it’s _all_ fine,’ but when he opens his mouth what comes pouring out is: “I let a guy fuck me in Shinjuku.”

He blinks.

So does Akira. His blush loses its cute edge; spreads clear up to his hairline. “Uh,” he says.

Ryuji couldn’t have said it better himself.

“I, uh...it was just a…” _One time thing_ is so shaky it doesn’t even make it past his Adam’s apple.

 _Fuck_.

To his credit, Akira snaps out of it quick; his lax mouth pulls back into a placating, supportive not-smile. “That’s...we can just forget this whole conversation ever happened. You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want.”

Ryuji doesn’t want.

But, even with—or maybe because of—all his jank, he knows better than to think he can ever forget anything about this conversation, so…

“Nah, man, it’s fine, I should...I mean, it was just a _thing_ , you know? Things happen…”

He licks his lips. They’re tacky in the middle; dry around the edges.

 _Things happen_.

He wonders, suddenly, if maybe they don’t.

Maybe it’s more like _shit_ can _go down_ , and _bombs_ can _drop_ , and _other shoes_ can have freakishly long _falls_ , but _things_ , it’s becoming obvious, don’t _just happen_. “Eff, I’m such a _freak_ , I swear to god,” Ryuji sighs alongside a hint of laughter that’s not quite bitter but nowhere near sincere either.

His face must be doing something, because in the next moment Akira’s hand is on his shoulder, squeezing, and he’s being pinned beneath the weight of one of those practically patented, see-all-judge-not stares. “You’re not a freak,” he says. “So there.”

Ryuji snorts despite himself, so sudden and loud that it makes his sinuses itch, but it’s with a smile he’s surprised to feel is far less wry than he’d have thought. “Yeah?” he asks. “So there?”

Akira squeezes his shoulder again. “So there.”

Maybe he’d been right to begin with; maybe _things_ do just _happen_ , now and again. Here’s one: he lays in a stuffy attic with his best friend and talks about all the janky ways he suspects he might like to be loved. It’s not stupid, and it’s not freaky, and it’s not enough, either. It’s just a start; just the split-second imbalance before another bit of his mess topples over inside him. But it’ll settle again. Maybe this time a little more tidily.

So there.

* * *

The thing about Akira knowing everything about Ryuji is that Akira knows _everything_ about Ryuji.

It’s great, in some ways. In most ways, even. All the Phantom Thieves share a bond—they get each other in ways no one else ever will, probably (banding together to tell god to shove it will do that to people)—but Akira’s got him down so good they hardly have to talk. There’s no pausing for reasoning or explanation. Ryuji says things and does things (and feels things) and there’s never a _why_ between him and Akira anymore; just a smile and a nod (and sometimes a _so there_ ).

Honestly, it wouldn’t be a problem if Ryuji knew everything about Ryuji, too.

He’s doing better, in that regard. Sometimes he feels like he can even make out the shape of all his jank; can see the spaces around the edges where he’s managing to get it sorted out and put away properly. Sometimes it even feels like there’s _more_ space than jank, and isn’t _that_ a trip.

He’s not stupid, though. (He knows that, now— _so there_.) There are _things_ he hasn’t figured out about himself.

The problem is he’s pretty sure Akira _has_.

And that’s especially concerning because most of Ryuji’s _things_ have to do with Akira, himself.

The fact that Ryuji isn’t totally straight is one of the bits of jank he’s managed to clear away. Which way he curves—to the left or the right or around in circles—is still heaped in a corner inside himself, but he’s picking through that, too, bit by bit. Akira’s been helpful in that regard, giving encouraging smiles (but, tellingly, not _too_ encouraging—he still lets Ryuji figure this shit out for himself, thank god) every time Ryuji stutters over a _he_ or a _she_.

Thing is, more and more often it’s Akira himself making Ryuji trip up like that, and he can’t quite tell how obvious he’s being about it. Hell, he can’t quite tell if it would matter if he’s being obvious or not, given how well Akira knows him. And it’s usually such a good thing, how easily Akira accepts everything about Ryuji, but _now_ …

God, now it’s _torture_.

They lay on the ground to escape as much of the approaching summer heat as possible, shooting the shit between episodes of X-Folders, and Akira shifts so his left leg presses up against Ryuji’s right, and it means _nothing_ —is a harmless, mindless gesture one or the other of them has done a hundred times before. But now Ryuji’s aware of just how _warm_ Akira’s skin is; how he doesn’t move even as their calves slick up with mingled sweat. Now Ryuji finds himself wondering if Akira can feel the raised tissue of his scar even through both their shorts; if it makes him think things like _rugged little troublemaker_ …

And Akira smiles—but not _too_ encouragingly.

(He doesn’t move his leg, either, though.)

They hit the showers at Protein Lovers, and Ryuji looks. That in itself isn’t a big deal—everyone looks, especially in a gym; there are certain comparisons to be made, no matter what anyone claims, and all it takes is a simple ‘ _nice gains_ ’ to get away with it. But now Ryuji _looks_. He feels like he’s living in a giant Magic Eye and the picture’s suddenly become clear. There are so many places he’s never thought to pay attention to before, and every time one catches his eye he can’t help himself: he _looks_. He looks at the way Akira’s shoulder blades shift beneath the skin of his back. He looks at the soft crease where his ass meets his thigh. He looks at the barely-there trail of dark hair, so fine it’s only visible when Akira’s fresh from the shower and the shitty fluorescent lights hit him just right, leading down, down, _down_ , to his—

Well. Ryuji _looks_.

And Akira smiles—but not _too_ encouragingly.

(He doesn’t cover up, either, though.)

They strip down to loose pyjama pants and kick the blanket off the futon in the attic, sprawled side-by-side as usual despite the cloying heat, both determined to keep as much in the path of the single rotating fan as possible. They keep the lights off, but moonlight spills in through the open window brightly enough that Ryuji can see the sweat condensing on Akira’s chest. He’s ditched his glasses for the night, face bare and a little shiny and plastered at the temples with wisps of hair. And even though Morgana’s visiting Haru so they don’t have to keep quiet and it’s so sweltering that their mingled breath gets caught between them and makes it hard to breathe, they keep their heads tilted close together, whispering nonsense about school and friends and dethroning god.

And Ryuji keeps glancing at Akira’s lips, and he can’t tell if he wants to kiss him, and he has no idea if that would even be a bad idea or not.

And Akira smiles—but not _too_ …

(...)

Shit, Ryuji doesn’t even know, anymore. _Is it_ encouraging? Is it just placating? Is it _that’s okay, Ryuji, we can try this out_ , or is it _that’s okay, Ryuji, you’ll get over it_?

He swears he feels a little dizzy, but that might be the heat.

(It might be Akira.)

(What he wouldn’t give for a _so there_ to clear this all up.)

“You think all the ribbing is because Futaba has a crush on Yusuke?”

Ryuji snickers. “No, I think _Yusuke_ has a crush on Yusuke.”

Akira snickers, too. His breath makes their air smell like coffee. “I’m telling him you said that.”

“Go ahead, he’ll probably take it as a compliment.”

Akira laughs harder at that. “Ah, does the soul of the artist not require ego?” he says in his best Kitagawa (a _freakishly_ good impression), and they both devolve into badly stifled hysterics.

And then they devolve into badly stifled silence. The fan creaks an obnoxious rhythm. There’s a couple arguing in one of the alleys outside, too far away to make out any words. Every time Akira breathes out Ryuji hears the quiet hiss of it a split second before the hot air hits his upper lip, and it should be gross, but instead it makes him glance down to see if he can see his own breath condense on Akira’s cupid’s bow.

“I’m gonna kiss you, I think.”

It takes Ryuji a second to realize it’s _him_ that said that. (Akira just smiles— _very_ encouragingly.)

“You think?” Akira asks.

...whoa, okay, _yeah_ , actually.

He’s going to kiss Akira.

He thinks.

Akira beats him to it. He leans in, and their lips slide together with too much sweat, and Ryuji grabs him by the ribs with a moist palm that’s far too eager, so his fingertips dig in and make Akira shudder and laugh. “’m _ticklish_ ,” he mumbles against Ryuji’s lips, and his hand is swampy, too, where he presses it underneath Ryuji’s chin. They’re a little sloppy, not lined up right at first, just a little _janky_ …

It’s the first break Ryuji can remember sounding so fucking _good_.

“So there,” Akira says, low and breathless as he pulls away.

Ryuji wants to laugh, but he kisses Akira again, instead.

 _So there_.

Ryuji doesn’t even know what this does to his jank—upends it entirely, maybe, but in a way that somehow leaves a massive new space free and clear. And Ryuji _basks_ in that space; flings himself into the emptiness of it where there’s nothing to focus on but the way Akira presses toward him like he’s been _waiting_ for this perfect break to happen.

Maybe he has. Ryuji wonders how long he’s been able to see it coming. He’ll ask him, later, in between other important, awkward questions they’ll need to sort out.

For now, though, he rucks up the sheets between them as he shuffles closer to Akira’s body. The meagre breeze from the fan gets lost somewhere around their ankles, so his toes are a little cold where he presses them between Akira’s shins, even though the leg that follows radiates uncomfortable amounts of heat. It’s far too hot to get this close, but he doesn’t care, and Akira clearly doesn’t, either, the way he holds him with one hand wedged under his jaw and the other draping over his waist, fingers silly and slippery and wet. The heat is nothing compared to the _things happening_ between them. It’s an absentminded _so what?_ ; hardly an afterthought when the push-pull glide of their mouths against each other is a heady, exhilarating _so there_.

Akira’s tense wherever Ryuji touches him—his jaw, his neck, his shoulders, his ribs, all with his shaky, damp right hand (because he can’t bring himself to stop kissing Akira long enough to jostle his left arm free from where it’s pinned beneath his waist)—but it’s a good kind of tension. Like he’s trying not to break their rhythm; fighting not to push up against Ryuji’s touch. And then he does this thing with his thumb—pulls back just long enough to tug at Ryuji’s bottom lip with it and then swipes it against his cheek as he leans back in—and it’s so simple and intimate that it makes Ryuji stutter out this little _hah_ noise, and when Akira kisses him again he slides his tongue into the open space he’s created, and Ryuji barely has the presence of mind to shift his hand down to Akira’s hip before his tightening grip can dig too hard into those ticklish ribs again.

It’s slow and easy, a little haphazard with inexperience but all the better for it, too. Ryuji’s done this before, he knows...only he hasn’t. Shouto’s kitchen suddenly feels very far away and unimportant; a thing he can’t compare to this when it’s another _so what?_ to this _so there_. He feels giddy and raw, like it’s the first time (because in all the ways that count, it is).

Akira’s hips are nudging back and forth in little aborted thrusts beneath Ryuji’s palm, and the implications of _that_ has him making a needy, embarrassing noise into Akira’s mouth. He tugs without really thinking about it; jerks Akira toward him by the hip and doesn’t even realize until he’s done it how hard he is in his pyjamas. How hard they _both_ are.

Fuck. _Fuck_ , they’re not quite lined up, so Akira’s landed with the tip of the outline of his dick pressed above the waistline of Ryuji’s pants, and there’s a _damp spot_ there, obvious even through the general haze of their sweat. “Yeah,” he pants, right against Ryuji’s lips, and reaches down to hold them close together with a hand in the small of Ryuji’s back. “ _Yeah_ , I...it’s it okay if I…?” He presses forward and up, down and back, hard and strained and _wet_ against him.

“Yeah, ’s good, ’s _good_ ,” Ryuji slurs, and kisses Akira again so he has somewhere to hide the hard, strained, _wet_ noise that comes out when he starts thrusting in counterpoint.

It’s too hot to go any faster than sluggish. They writhe in a hazy, tempo-less exchange, heedless of the way their stomachs make dumb slapping noises every now and again when they collide out of sync. Akira keeps making these hiccupy, choked off moans, and his fingers are curled tight against Ryuji’s spine, and he’s so hard that just the hint of the tip of his dick peeks out the top of his underwear and pants on every upward thrust and it turns Ryuji on so much it aches in his gut, so deep it makes him nauseous. “I need to–” he cuts himself off with a groan ( _fuck_ , Akira’s just leaked a clear smudge right below his belly button, and that has no right being as hot as it is). He’s already reaching down, already tugging at Akira’s pants and then his own. “Fuck, Akira, can I touch you?”

The noise Akira makes is too gruff to be whiny, but it edges on it. He shimmies his hips; reaches down to help Ryuji fumble until they’ve got their pyjamas and underwear shoved down around their thighs. It makes it harder for them to move, but Ryuji doesn’t care, doesn’t fucking _care_ when Akira’s settling his hand on Ryuji’s ass and hauling him in close and sighing his name—“Ryu– _Ryuji_ ,” and _holy shit_ that vulnerable little gasp in the middle makes Ryuji want to _die_ —and catching his bottom lip between his teeth.

Ryuji doesn’t know what he’s doing when he gets his hand around both of them, but he doesn’t really care about that, either. It’s new, foreign, familiar but strange, but who cares when it’s so over-the-top good? They slide against each other, slipping messy and uncoordinated through the too-tight ring of his fist, and he can barely keep his grip when they’re bucking this hard, but _who the fuck cares_ when he can feel Akira leak and swell and twitch against him like this?

“Ryuji, I–” Akira groans; grips Ryuji’s ass harder. “You’re gonna make me come.”

It’s the _you’re gonna make me_ that does it; the little reminder that Ryuji is doing this to him—that they’re doing this to _each other_ , settling even deeper into their respective spots, Ryuji beside Akira, Akira beside Ryuji, fitting chaotic and impulsive and _perfect_ together.

Ryuji comes with some garbled version of Akira’s name in his mouth. He pulses heavy and hot and wet into the already sticky space between them, and throbs in all the tiny spaces between his muscles and his bones, and knows nothing but Akira, Akira, _Akira_ –

There’s a low gasp, and a frantic, violent series of thrusts into Ryuji’s prone fist, and a strangled little string of _fuckfuckfuck_ s, and then Akira’s gone, too, shaking as he spills over the both of them and mumbles, “Ryuji, _god_ , _Ryuji_ …”

They’re disgusting in the aftermath. The air is heavy and stale, permeated with the smell of spit and sweat and come. The sheets are a lost cause, more wet spot than anything else, and when Akira kisses him it’s slick and salty and gross. Ryuji pulls him close before he can think about it; his hand leaves a nasty smear in the ditch of Akira’s back. They collide with a squelch, far too hot for this kind of cuddling.

It’s just a little janky. It sounds like the kind of break that’ll heal just right.

“So there,” Akira mutters, and kisses the corner of Ryuji’s mouth.

He laughs, even though he doesn’t really have the breath to, yet, and kisses Akira properly.

 _So there_.

**Author's Note:**

> [Hey, I'm on Twitter!](https://twitter.com/BleedingType) Come visit me, I need people to gush about this game (and the perfect ball of blonde sunshine therein) with.
> 
> (I'm also in the pegoryu discord but I'm way, way, way too anxious to post there again. 😭 My intro w/ info is there, tho, if you ever wanna shoot me a message! DMs are always open. :3)


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